R.V. Raghu is spokesperson of ISACA, a global IT professional association and learning organisation. Raghu has over a decade of hands-on global expertise in engineering, manufacturing, information technology, chemicals, mining, and telecommunications. He recently joined NewsX for an exclusive interview as part of the NewsX India A-List and discussed ISACA and its importance in India.

“One of the most fascinating aspects of today’s world is the rise of technology. Technology has been similar to energy or water in that we use it without considering what is behind it. This is where an organisation like ISACA and what ISACA does in the Indian context is very important. We are very good at implementing innovations but only later do we find out about cyber protection problems or any other obstacles that are behind the technology. It is here ISACA provides experts with the resources they need to ensure that technology risks are identified at an early stage and handled effectively,” he said.

In terms of ISACA certifications, Raghu elaborated, “We provide four kinds of certifications in India—CISA, Certified Information System Auditor, which is the oldest certification that we offer. It is really popular because it helps you inspect technologies and anything related to them. The other qualification is the CISM, which stands for Certified Information System Manager. CRISC and CGEIT are two new ISACA certifications that have piqued my interest. One of them is the Information Technology-certified associate, which is something that works for anybody who is new in the business and is trying to prove that they have the understanding of the fundamentals.”

He explained ISACA’s background, saying, “ISACA is a multinational, not-for-profit organisation. The firm has been in operation for 50 years. It all began with a group of experts in the United States deciding that we needed to work together to provide a better mechanism for auditing, and the great thing about ISACA is that it is entirely motivated by desire. ISACA has approximately 220 chapters in 188 countries and 150,000 members. We’ve been in India since 1968, with the first chapter set in Chennai. Today we have chapters in almost every corner of the country. As a result, once an individual becomes member, he or she has access to all of the services that ISACA provides at both the national and local levels.”

“One of the things that ISACA has recognised is innovative learning methodologies,” he said when asked about the organisation’s current offerings. “Traditional pedagogical approaches are no longer effective. Not only have methodologies evolved as a result of the pandemic, but also as a result of the Internet. We have the ITCA (Information Technology Certified Associate) certification. It aids in the comprehension of foundational concepts in fields such as networking, basic cybersecurity, software development fundamentals and data science. CET (Certification of Emerging Technologies) is another certificate we have. It allows professionals to keep up with the latest developments in technology.”

He clarified the philanthropic aspect of the organisation by saying, “ISACA recognises that, while we are a volunteer-driven organisation, there are segments of society that are under-represented that need access to all of these resources. The word “opportunity” has always stood out for ISACA. We’re attempting to address three issues: young adults, the shield stick, and inclusivity. If someone wants to become a member then they have to go to isaca.org to get access to all member-related information, or they can contact one of the several chapters in India or around the world.”

Around the globe, civil aviation has been a sector that has propelled economic growth, promoted social development and created access. On the other hand, it has also had a limited detrimental impact on our environment, especially on the local environment, as aircraft and airport operations contribute to air, water, soil and noise pollution.

In October 2016, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) decided to launch an initiative to limit emissions from international aviation. Global consciousness around this has driven numerous policy-based solutions to be implemented in the sector regarding the efficient operation of aircraft and airports.

As we celebrate World Environment Day in United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, it is fitting to look at the Indian civil aviation sector and the efforts taken to step into the next era of aviation, with environmental and ecosystem preservation as a core tenet.

Pre-Covid, India was the third-largest domestic aviation market globally, with approximately 140 million passengers traveling annually. The country is poised to become the third-largest overall market in three years. With just 7.3% of the population using aviation as a mode of transportation, the growth potential in the sector is immense.

While Covid-19 has undoubtedly disrupted the sector, we are making a resilient and robust comeback as we revitalise our economy. Push for initiatives like the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme, which independently assesses and recognises the efforts of airports to manage and reduce their carbon emissions through 6 levels of certification, is a timely intervention to combat climate change.

India has been following the programme since 2014. Recognising that the Indian aviation sector will undergo exponential growth in the coming years, addressing the environment and sustainability concerns is a top priority for us.

Delhi Airport is the first airport in the Asia-Pacific region to have achieved “Level 3+, Neutrality” accreditation in 2016 and “Level 4+, Transition”, the highest accreditation in 2020. Other airports like Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore International Airports have achieved Level 3+ Airport Carbon accreditation.

Airports Authority of India has been taking the lead in implementing technical fixes for route optimisation like shortening and straightening major air routes, Reduced Horizontal Separation and Performance-based Navigation (PBN). In consultation with Indian Air Force, AAI has optimised airspace utilisation under the Flexible Use of Airspace (FUA) initiative. Estimated annual CO2 emissions reduction by establishing the 32 conditional routes come to about 2 lakh metric tonnes.

Initiatives to promote the adoption and promotion of renewable energy use at Indian airports have also been initiated. Since 2014, the installed solar capacity has increased by 44 MWp at 44 airports, helping us achieve a carbon emission reduction of approximately 57,600 tonnes of CO2 per annum at AAI Airports.

Today, Delhi Airport sources 100% of its energy demand through renewable energy sources. Similarly, with an installed solar power capacity of 40 MWp, Cochin International Airport has become the first fully solar-powered airport in India.

In tandem, initiatives to promote energy conservation and monitoring have also been brought into the fold through regular energy audits. Since 2014, review audits to assess the effectiveness of implementation measures of previous audits have already been completed for 50 airports.

Also, under the National LED programme (UJALA-Unnat Jyoti by Affordable LEDs for All), AAI has aimed to replace conventional light fixtures with LED fittings at 85 airports. The work has been completed at 81 airports, and at four airports, the work is in progress.

Infrastructure building, which is another essential aspect of an expanding civil aviation industry in the country, has been brought under a green and sustainability focus. Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru International Airports have already received a ‘Gold rating’ by the International Green Building Organisation, LEED. While Jammu, Chandigarh and Tirupati airports have received a “4-star rating” by Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA), which is India’s very own green building rating system.

The AAI has also taken the initiative on waste and water management by minimising the wastage of potable water by processing wastewater and reusing treated water. The Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) and Rainwater harvesting are provided/planned with every existing/new project.

Through the ‘UDAN: Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik’ scheme, 100 new airports are being built to increase access to civil aviation in the country. This development will benefit from the decisions made in hindsight, as green infrastructure, energy efficiency, waste management, and efficient transportation have become vital aspects of India’s expanding civil aviation sector.

Over the next decade, finding the appropriate balance between ecology, economy, and society will be crucial. The development in India’s civil aviation sector, which is synchronous with preserving and restoring our environment and ecosystems, is the key to unlocking a safe, healthy and prosperous future for our citizens and remains a cornerstone philosophy of the Modi government.

The writer is Union Minister for Civil Aviation. The views expressed are personal.

During the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, several facets have come to the fore in India’s fight against the deadly virus. NGO ActionAid and its Executive Director Sandeep Chachra have been relentlessly pursuing the humanitarian cause and have set a precedent in serving people. 

Q. Tell us about the work you have done during the pandemic?

A. Our extended network, which comprises ActionAid teams across 24 States and two Union Territories, co-ordinators placed in over 100 districts, grassroots-based civil society organisations, and community-based volunteers and activists, and our strong links with district administrations, enabled us to provide much-needed support to over 7.7 million people in the first Covid wave. This included ration kits, cooked food, and sanitation materials. In the second wave, the health aspects and medical support are high on the needs of people, besides economic support. People have faced double jeopardy, for which they have got little succour and support from the government.

We started awareness drives through tempos and autos in 20 states and UTs to inform communities about Covid-appropriate behaviour and to promote vaccinations. We have set up Covid helplines in 12 states and helpdesks through that we have been helping affected persons and their families with updated accurate information including the availability of medicines, hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, and in some cases telemedical consultation. By the third week of May 2021, we were running 71 helpdesks across 16 states and two UTs. We are working to strengthen medical services by providing volunteers to run Covid Care Centres and arrange supplies and equipment at these centres and public hospitals. With support from various corporates and others such as Give India, we will be strengthening efforts of Primary Health Care Centres and Community Health Care Centres in 100 districts in 15 states through the provision of several thousand oxygen concentrators. We are now setting up Covid Care Wards for children in two states, and plan to expand this to five. We have set up community kitchens and are also providing free cooked meals in several Indian cities. With regards to rations, we are focussing our first outreach to vulnerable communities such as refugees, transgenders, families of domestic workers, and all informal workers out of work, slum populations, children in difficult circumstances, tribals etc.

We have also been providing inputs to Union and state governments on the kind of policies they need to set up to help vulnerable communities cope with the crisis and respond to their needs. We make efforts to bring to the public discourse challenges being faced by vulnerable communities and programme policy solutions to mitigate their precarity through grounded participatory researches. The impact of the pandemic is not short term. Whenever this wave abates, apart from preparing for the third wave, a green recovery process is needed to address recovery from the perspective marginalise. This can be done by creating sustainable rural and urban livelihoods, green jobs, and social security for workers in villages and towns; by taking steps to ensure universal, responsive, free, and quality public services particularly in health and education; by ensuring support to children, who are out of education, don’t drop out; by ensuring protection to women so that their work participation rates don’t drop even lower and unpaid care work at home is shared equally and so on.

Q. What has kept the spark in you alive to continue working with ActionAid?

A. ActionAid has amazing people in its teams and the ones it works with. They are committed, driven, reflective, and passionate in their pursuit of equality and justice. It is endlessly inspiring to be leading this organisation, with the guidance of a wonderful governing board and assembly. We have been blessed to have friendships, associations, partnerships, and solidarity with individual change-makers, social formations and movements, philanthropists, and people in administration and governance who engage in social development to create an ecosystem of hope and belief.

The NGO gives space to all those who stand to undo structures and historical processes of oppression —patriarchy, caste, inequality, and injustice with a belief in welfare and social advancement, brings many, like me to embrace it. 

 In the years that I’ve worked here, I’m sharing few examples of the work we been involved in:

Homeless: starting 2001 putting it on the national agenda to build formations

Manual scavenging: starting late 90s and continuously work on it to support and contribute to developing national campaigns and formations.

Triple Talaq: to build grounded momentum for rights of Muslim women.

De-notified communities and extremely vulnerable workers. Such crucial contributions inspire several people and keep us moving. 

Q. What are the future plans of ActionAid in terms of capacity build-up?

A. Building resilience in the communities we are working with has been our long-term aim for decades since we adopted the rights-based approach in the 1990s. In the latest strategy approach that we adopted in 2019, we had expanded our rights-based approach in two directions, we moved strongly towards collective and community-based rights not remaining limited to individual rights, and we expanded the realm of our engagements beyond rights to the question of social justice as well as understood the need to move towards engaging with issues of ecological justice. The pandemic has strengthened our effort to remain more closely rooted with vulnerable communities, and beyond the project mode. Thus, we have resolved to play a more active role in district-level engagements with vulnerable communities to make a real difference in questions of social and ecological justice in the lives of wider expanses of populations. We recognise that this calls for both rooted actions and campaign mode engagements with people to build and strengthen their collective agency for social progress, justice and equality. 

The pandemic has taught us all the importance of gender-responsive, free, and universal public services particularly in areas of health, sanitation, and education. We look forward to engaging more effectively in securing universal, free, and quality health, water, and sanitation services for all as a step to seek and contribute to building a participatory democracy. 

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the Congress and other Opposition parties had tried their level best on many occasions to showcase that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had blundered on several occasions from demonetisation, GST, triple talaq, CAA, NRC and NPR to abrogation of Article 370, Ayodhya case, farm laws and disinvestment. But the people of the nation stood behind PM Modi since his non-corrupt practices in the governance resulted in drastic reduction in India’s ranking in the Corruption Index by 2020. The Opposition knows that their attempts have failed due to a lack of sincerity and honesty in their approach against PM Modi.

Such has been the desperation among them that even at time when India is facing the Covid-19 pandemic, they seem fine with the idea of taking political benefits out of the unprecedented crisis. They are accused of going to the extent of manufacturing the “toolkit” for negative propaganda against PM Modi while he was trying to combat the pandemic. A section of the media too has fallen for such tactics, forgetting that these unprecedented times need unprecedented unity among all in the country.

Fact checking is very much essential to assess reality. We can observe the comments of a section of the media that the Modi-led government had handled the situation better in the first wave of pandemic but failed to take the precautionary measures during the second wave. But when analysed closely, these same media and Opposition had criticised every measure of the Centre during the lockdown and unlock phases in the first wave in contrary to their present statements. That means, they (opposition) are always masters to design toolkits against PM Modi and particularly those who always speak negatively about him have chosen the pandemic as the greatest opportunity for their political aims.

Everyone had projected that India would be the worst impacted country in the world due to the population density in the first wave, at that time also the Opposition was criticising the government. But, if we observe the facts, issues, and requirements pertaining to the second wave it is quite distinct from the first wave due to different strains and variants. PM Modi-led government had taken timely appropriate measures like lockdowns, containment zones, and unlock measures with the coordination of state governments. The Union government adequately cautioned the state governments from time to time after the first wave and appealed to them that they should take responsible decisions as per the conditions in the respective states since state governments were accustomed to act with the experience from the first wave. 

In our federal structure Centre and state relations have been carefully drafted. Our Constitution, Articles, and Schedules have fairly defined their roles and responsibilities. But Covid-19 situation has created some confusion as the heads of the state governments like Delhi, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh are busy writing letters to PM Modi to escape from their failure and responsibilities though the Union government has been busy in maintaining the supply chain as per the requirements such as allocation of oxygen, medicines and vaccine distribution from time to time to maintain equality among the states on the basis of their needs. Initially, the second wave and different strains, thereof, created a huge unexpected demand for beds, ventilators, oxygen, medicines, doctors, other frontline warriors, vaccine production and vaccination drive. As per the information, 62,458 oxygen supported beds were available on 20 April 2020, the figure raised to 2,47,972 by 20 September 2020 and simultaneously, ICU beds and ventilators also increased from 27,360 to 66,638 and from 13,158 to 33,024, respectively during this period. Besides this, the number of oxygen-supported beds increased by 297%; ICU beds by 143%; and ventilators by 151% between 20 April and 20 September last year. It was a substantial improvement of resources under the practical constraints of a pandemic. Actually, this infrastructure was expected to provide a breather to serve in the second wave but unfortunately, these facilities were down by at least 25% at the initiation of the second wave due to the changes in attitude and mindset of people, there was a mood of relaxation as Covid cases were less. In contrast to this, a large number of Covid patients struggled to get hospital beds, oxygen, ventilators, medicines, and other infrastructure in the second wave due to a rise in positive cases like a tide that had created a huge gap between the demand for medical facilities and requirements in multifold. In this situation, almost all state governments had thrown the entire burden on PM Modi-led Union government to protect their skin and opposition parties, pseudo-intellectuals, and a section of predetermined media used the tool kits to blame Narendra Modi as a cause for the damage in the second wave. But the opposition could not answer what their governments had done when they were in power.

But, PM Modi silently concentrated on his job to get things into order. Let us ask some questions, what was our medical oxygen capacity in normal times, we used to produce 900 metric tonnes of liquid medical oxygen per day. Now, that figure has increased to about 9,500 metric tonnes per day to supply the life-saving gas to hospitals treating Covid patients, which means the capacity has increased by 10 times. Today, we have sufficient oxygen available on hand and the situation is under control. We know about the miserable situation of Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and other parts of the country for the first three days of the second wave due to oxygen shortage but today things are settled due to the relentless efforts of the PM Modi-led Union government. When PM Modi’s team was busy manufacturing indigenous oxygen from PSUs and private industries like Reliance, TATA etc., importing medical supplies and equipment from other countries by air, rail, and road, installing oxygen plants with PM Cares funds including one lakh portable oxygen concentrators were being ordered to procure and 500 more PSA oxygen plants developed by DRDO were being sanctioned, Rahul Gandhi’s team was busy in negative propaganda with their tool kits.

Our problems were not over with oxygen supply alone. Simultaneously, there was a scarcity of Remidesivir injections, ventilators, and other medicines. Can we think in the right direction in this scenario when the Congress, communists, and other anti-Modi forces operated their tool kits to influence the international media deliberately against the brand image of our nation just for the sake of diluting our Prime Minister’s goodwill in the international fraternity? When these anti-Modi forces joined to use the pandemic as the opportunity to tarnish his image with pre-designed tool kits, Narendra Modi maintained silence to complete his job in a cool and calm manner and provided ventilators through the PM Cares fund as well as Remidesivir and other medical kits. These negative forces should honestly answer what sort of physical and human medical infrastructure was there before 2014 and why the state governments were unable to facilitate basic medical infrastructure. How can they blame PM Modi for everything? He has faced the challenge to bring things in order though the damage is beyond everyone’s expectations. There is one more blame on PM Modi regarding vaccine production and vaccination drive. First, Rahul Gandhi parivar, anti-Modi forces, and some sections of journalists negatively propagated the efficacy of our indigenous vaccine and many of them even declared they won’t take this vaccine, which impacted the vaccination drive initially. Now, the same people are asking when will the vaccination drive be completed and how will we increase vaccine production. How can they speak about the vaccine and vaccination drive when they have doubts about the efficacy of our indigenous vaccine? Isn’t it politics around the pandemic by the anti-Modi forces? Besides this, few state governments like Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Delhi wrote letters to PM Modi for the augmentation of vaccination drive.

Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh had pointed out the policy of the Union government pertaining to the 50% share of vaccine production allocated to the state governments and private hospitals for the age group of 18 to 44 years since the cost of the vial is as high as Rs 25,000 in some private hospitals. But here the question is that the state government in Andhra Pradesh is incompetent to coordinate or control the hospitals. It is not a good idea to divert their failures by writing letters to the Prime Minister to escape from their responsibility. Why did the Chief Minister not conduct any virtual meeting with the private hospitals to address this issue? Interestingly, the private hospitals in neighbouring states have been serving vaccines for Rs 12,500 per vial to the people, why can’t Jagan Mohan Reddy manage the same and not try to corner the Union government for his ineffective and inefficient administration capabilities.

As per experts’ opinion, both government and private hospitals together can complete a successful vaccination drive. Those who can afford the vaccine will choose private hospitals which reduce the stress on the government. PM Modi-led Union government has convinced Bharat Biotech to transfer the formula of Covaxin with the BSL3 standards Biotech company for the augmentation of the production. The Union Health Ministry has declared the schedules of availability of 260 crore vaccines from Bharat Biotech, Serum Institute of India, and others from August to December 2021.

Though PM Modi is moving ahead for Shrestha Bharat with reforms in his seven years of governance, the opposition is hand in glove in an international conspiracy against him for Bhrashta Bharat by using the tool kits to tarnish the image of PM Modi-led Union government for their cheap political tactics. But truth always prevails and the people of our nation know the truth.

The writer holds a degree in commerce and works as an FCA. The views expressed are personal.

In all the years of my life— having been born and brought up in India— I have never seen an invisible tsunami hit millions of my countrymen and that too at such a harrowing swiftness. I do not hesitate in saying that we are under attack of an invisible enemy and we are moving the heavens and the earth to fight against it.

If we compare the statistics of the first and the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the later has been more lethal—71 lakh infections in 21 days is 7.1 million people getting infected across the country in just a matter of 21 days. These numbers are menacing enough to break the medical infrastructure of any country on the planet. The things went bad so swiftly that it caught the healthcare infrastructure off guard. This is the sole reason I call it a Tsunami, as it came with all the force and merely gave us any time to respond.

Talking of the culprit virus, with three mutations, this is a different creature altogether, and what we have seen and experienced, the way it behaves and acts, it is entirely different this time, throwing numerous challenges of enormous magnanimity at the medical fraternity, administration, and the law enforcement in unison— needless to say, my beloved countrymen are bearing the brunt too.

Under the able leadership of PM Modi, India got into the fighting gear timely, and we decided not to give up. Our response towards the second wave has been sturdy. Let us talk about a few pointers:

1. We increased our oxygen production by 30% in less than one month.

2. We used our air force and the biggest flying machines (for example C31 Hercules Globe Master) the world has ever made to do numerous sorties around the world to bring cryogenic tanks, oxygen cylinders, concentrators, and other essential medical amenities. On average, each Hercules did 400 plus trips in ten days.

3. We even air-lifted empty tankers to factories in these gigantic planes to save time.

4. The Railway came up with numerous coach hospitals and thus added thousands of mobile oxygen beds in hospitals on wheels to the country’s medical infra to battle the virus.

5. Multiple Oxygen Express on Green Corridor has been running around the country nonstop.

Morover, Indian Navy got huge quantities of LMO from across the world from a host of friendly countries.

Our ‘HCQ reach out’ and ‘Vaccine Maitri’ came to rescue and helped India to battle this crisis, and may I say with humility world came to our rescue; baring a few hostile countries. This has been possible because of the great vision of our Honorable PM and the incredible diplomacy of Dr. Jai Shanker Ji.

DRDO under the leadership of Rajnath Singh Ji came up with the easiest and affordable “make and install oxygen generator technology” in no time. From Anti Viral drugs to Rapid Antigen testing kits and setting up 500-bed Covid-19hospitals in a lot of districts of the country at a lightning-fast speed to helping civilians in all Military Hospitals is simply commendable.

Haryana Government, under the leadership of the honorable CM Manohar Lal Khatter, was quick to get in action and was swift to tackle the situation on the ground which included sending teams to all villages, making oxygens plants mandatory for all hospitals, Corona advisory on medicines to be used, and making sure that the tests happen across the nook and corner of State. In addition to hospitals and oxygen beds across the State, management of oxygen has been brilliant, so is the availability of critical medicines.

Gurugram is the land where I have grown up from a kid to what I am today. My home was one of the worst-hit districts in Haryana with approximately 25% of the total cases.

Our first step here was to assemble a team and mobilize the carders at the grass-root level. We set up a control room, which worked 24X7 to help people, and we ensured all essential drugs reach needy people.

Today the things are much under control and we are only left with 7000 active cases with an average recovery of 3500 per day, and new cases somewhere around 600 or less. Also, after coordinating with Anil Vijji and under the able guidance of Dr. Harsh Vardhan ji, we are aware of the possibility of a third wave and we have already put a plan in action to combat the same. We have increased the infrastructure at all levels— private and government. We are coming up with approx 500 plus new COVID facilities with oxygen and ICU beds with the help of Seva Bharti and my own resources.

This is just the beginning, as I know and believe that humanity has to prevail and we all need to works tirelessly till we defeat this virus and vaccinate all our adult population by the end of December 2021. Till that time we need to reinforce our defense and hold the fort, as precious human lives are at stake.

The writer is a BJP leader and the Member of Legislative Assembly from Gurugram. The views expressed are personal.

The second Covid-19 wave sent the nation into deep crevices of misery and dejection. For the innumerable teary eyes, the countless desolate faces, the infinite gasps of worried breaths, and the thousands who couldn’t breathe to tell a tale, the nation bows in grief and anguish to express solidarity and belongingness. This time, the second wave shook the conscience, broke the resolution, and shattered the confidence of millions. The nation in this short span of time went through thousands of failure stories and a million successful ones. But, in all of this, anything that was worse than the crumbling health infrastructure, anything more depressing than the cremation snapshots, and anything more tyrannical than the vaccine and oxygen hoarders, was the politics of blame game played to shift the responsibility for the second wave. In order to understand the politics and the surrounding narratives, it is first important to go through the Covid timeline in India. Let’s traverse through the Covid timeline from March 2020 till now:

Source: https://prsindia.org/covid-19/cases/statewisecomparisonSource: https://prsindia.org/covid-19/cases/statewisecomparison

• March 2020-September 2020: There is a sharp incline in the number of new Covid cases every day from March to September with the number of daily new cases peaking in mid-September.

• October 2020- February 2021: There is a continuous decline in the number of new covid cases every day in the country. The numbers were less than 10000 new cases in mid-February.

• March 2021: There is a sudden increase in the number of covid cases with the number of new cases rising from close to 12286 new cases on 1st March to 72330 new cases on 31st Match

• April 2021- May 2021: Things go out of hand with the number of new cases rising from 81446 new cases on 1st April to 414188 new cases on 6th May followed by a gradual decline with each successive day.

Thus the second wave can be said to have started sometime in Mid March and peaking in May first week. This is an important timeline to remember while going through some of the narratives being spread in the blame game politics.

Let’s go through some of the most prevalent narratives disseminated:

WERE POLL RALLIES RESPONSIBLE FOR SECOND WAVE?

If this theory is to be believed then the continuous downward trend at the end of October and the first week of November 2020, during the Bihar elections would not have been a living reality. Though people might argue on stricter norms for the conduction of rallies there can be no disagreement that most of the times such norms were more on paper than in reality. Zooming into the present second wave, it is important to do a comparative analysis of the poll-bound states and the non-poll-bound states for establishing the truth in this case. Let’s look at the tables (1 and 2) below for understanding the active cases variation in poll-bound states and non-poll-bound states during the early phase of the second wave from 1st March till 6th April (election finished in three states):

If we analyse the data for poll-bound and non-poll-bound states we clearly see that the percentage increase in the non-poll-bound states is way higher than the poll-bound states. Maharashtra which had 78212 active cases on 1st March went up to 452777 active cases by 6th April. On the other hand, Tamil Nadu which had the highest percentage change in poll-bound states from 1st March till 6th April, shows a jump from 4022 active cases to 23777 active cases. Moving to Bengal, which got a lot of attention for poll rallies. Bengal saw a jump from 3307 active cases to 11446 active cases which is less in comparison to Delhi which showed a jump from 1335 active cases to 14589 active cases with almost 1/5th of the population of West Bengal.

Though questions may be asked on the testing numbers which vary in each state but by the plain reading of the data, election rallies cannot be termed as the reason for the second wave in India. The non-poll-bound states show a higher percentage increase in the number of active Covid cases in the same duration The second wave had well and truly grappled the nation by April 6th and the poll bound states weren’t directly responsible for it.

To turn our attention to Bengal for the rest of the phases till 29th April let’s understand the table below:

Thus if we compare West Bengal, which was poll-bound, to non-poll-bound states like Maharashtra and Delhi we see an increase of almost the same proportion as the non-poll-bound state like Delhi. Most of the cases might be attributed to the migrants returning home after losing employment opportunities in other states as some states started lockdowns. Also, rallies in the fag-end of the election around 20 April and later were reduced dramatically in the state when almost all the parties refrained from holding rallies as the cases started going up. Hence, the whole narrative around election rallies was cooked up to completely shift the blame for the second wave. Though elections rallies and polling on election days cannot be totally absolved the entire blame shouldn’t be put on it to malign the institution and the electoral process.

DID KUMBH MELA PLAY THE ROLE OF ASUPER-SPREADER?

There are numerous Twitter threads and social media posts from responsible politicians blaming the Kumbh congregation as the super spreader event in the second Covid wave. Though public gathering of anysort was unacceptable, let us again look at some relevant data to understand whether Kumbh was a super-spreader event or not. To have a clear understanding it is first important to go through the important Kumbh dates to analyse a timeline for the Covid cases accordingly. The important Kumbh dates were:

• Makar Sankranti 14 January 2021

• Mauni Amavasya 11 February 2021

• Basant Panchami 16 February 2021

• MaghPoornima 27 February 2021

• MahaShivratri 11 March 2021

• SomvatiAmamvasya 12 April 2021

• Baisakhi 14 April 2021

• Ram Navami 21 April 2021

Chaitra Purnima 27 April 2021

Now, let’s go through the number of cases in Uttarakhand on the above dates till 17th April when the top seers participating in the event mentioned that the event will only be symbolic from that day onwards. Also, let’s understand how the other states were doing at the same time in terms of the number of active cases:

Thus if we observe the the table (3 and 4) above it is amply clear that in the first four important dates or ‘Snans’ the number of Covid cases has continuously decreased in the state of Uttarakhand. While on the other hand, the number of Covid cases started rising in Maharashtra, Punjab, and Delhi from 16th February onwards. The jump in the number of active cases was almost more than three times in the state of Maharashtra and Punjab between 16th February and 11th March. The second Covid wave supposedly had already picked up in the country by Mid March. Even on 17th March, the Prime Minister in a meeting with Chief Ministers of different states warned them against the rising second Covid wave in the country. Even till 12th April when the number of active Covid cases in Delhi had reached 34341, Uttarakhand had 7323 active cases in the state. In this, it is to be kept in mind that the population of Delhi is close to 1.9 Crore while that of Uttarakhand is 1.01 Crore with additional tourists visiting the state because of Kumbh. It is highly foolish to assume that the super spreader event won’t affect the state in which the event is held but is responsible for the spread everywhere else. This is the level of IQ of people who had doubted the event for their personal goals and agendas. Hence, just by the pure observation of the data, it is amply clear that blaming Kumbh as a super-spreader event was with an agenda to malign the great intangible heritage of India. Also, it was primarily done to shift the blame for the second Covid wave.

This is Part 1 of the two-part series.

Sankalp Mishra is an engineer, lawyer, entrepreneur and an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus. The views expressed are personal.